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Posted by nikki

It’s been an intense three days, but Startup Weekend Detroit 2010 has finally wrapped up. This weekend has been extremely eye-opening and educational for the aspiring entrepreneurs who made amazing progress on their business concepts. Not only did the teams build businesses from the ground up, but they found camaraderie and potential business partners in people they just met three days ago. Not bad for a weekend, right?

The teams shifted a bit from the original eight business pitches that made the cut Friday night. Here’s a list of all the businesses formed this weekend and where you can find them online:

CauseCrazy

Website: http://www.causecrazy.com/

Twitter: @CauseCrazy

Facebook: CauseCrazy

YouTube: CauseCrazy

BlitzBabble

Twitter: @BlitzBabble

Facebook: BlitzBabble

SiteFog

Website: http://sitefog.wordpress.com/

Twitter: @SiteFog

SaltCodes

Website: http://saltcodes.com/

Twitter: @SaltCodes

Facebook: SaltCodes

Winsphere

Website: http://www.winsphere.com/

Twitter: @Winsphere

Facebook: Winsphere

Reframe Detroit

Website: http://reframedetroit.com/

Blog: http://reframedetroit.com/blog/

Twitter: @reframedetroit

Facebook: Reframe Detroit

Flickr: Reframe Detroit

NakedDetroit

Website: http://nakeddetroit.com/

Twitter: @NakedDetroit

Facebook: NakedDetroit

All day Sunday, the teams spent the day finalizing their plans and polishing their presentations for the second round of pitches. Once 5 p.m. rolled around, everyone gathered in the auditorium for the pitches. After a team air jump photo, it was go time. Each team had five minutes to present their business idea and then five minutes for Q&A with the jury. The pre-selected jury (including Adrian Pittman, Audrey Walker and Hubert Sawyers III) judged the teams on their wow factor, if they would invest in their business and the overall team.

The votes were tallied, and here are the results:

Most Fun Idea: CauseCrazy

Company Most Likely to Make $1 Million: SiteFog

Attendee Pick – Favorite Company: CauseCrazy

Excuse me for being a little corny, but in my mind, each of these teams are winners. It takes some hardcore stamina, passion and energy to build a business from nothing in one short weekend.

Best of luck to all the teams as they (hopefully) move forward with their business plans, and thanks for participating in Startup Weekend Detroit 2010! Now go home and get some sleep.

Come back to this blog often to stay up-to-date on what’s next for Startup Weekend Detroit.

Posted by nikki

Startup Weekend Detroit 2010 is winding down. T-minus two hours until it’s pitch time!

Len Smith took a break for a few minutes to tell us more about his team’s project, Winsphere.

Posted by nikki

It’s day 3 of Startup Weekend Detroit, and it’s crunch time for the teams. They’ll have to make a second pitch at 5 p.m. today. A previously selected jury will pick the best overall company, the company most likely to make $1 million and the most innovative company. The attendees will also get to pick their favorite company.

This morning I caught up with Eric Jorgenson from team Sitefog and Ryan Goins from team Salt whose teams have both made really good progress throughout the weekend.

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Post by Nikki Stephan

A new element to Startup Weekend Detroit this year is brief presentations/discussions meant to inspire and motivate the teams. First up was Rob Stam from The Big Red Group. Rob is an author, speaker and consultant whose expertise is entrepreneurship and business start-ups. He is author of the book “Almost Our Time”. Here’s a synopsis of Rob’s discussion:

• Rob believes there is an entire generation of entrepreneurs who are waiting for the right opportunity to come of their shell, despite what the media says.
• It’s our generation’s turn to start leading business.
• We face some interesting challenges that no generations in history have faced. World that we grew up in is entirely different today.
• Our economic/housing bubbles have burst. We live in an economy that’s struggling to find itself. Rob doesn’t see a lot of entrepreneurs who actually manufacture products. This is important to our economy.
• Personal message – value. There’s a difference between value (what matters to all of us) and values (what matters to each of us). As a society, we’ve lost that concept. We do things that are foolish in the name of values.
• Rob encourages us all as entrepreneurs to think of the value we can bring to society as we grow businesses.
• He started as an entrepreneur early, found success quickly and then crashed and burned…hard. Had to ask himself “How did I get here?” That led him to writing the book. What he used to define as success wasn’t success. Rob learned what influenced him as an individual and what influences our generation.
• As you look at being part of the economy, explore the topic of “value” more. There is a difference between what matters to “me” and what matters to “all of us”. We need to make better decisions for our collective society.
• Three things to break it down: People (think about you as an individual, how do you value relationships, what defines you and those around you), product (are you creating something of tangible value, does it create revenue) and politics (how organizations interact, outside forces can make or break you).

Next up was Michael Teshuba, CTO and co-founder of Michigan-based Mango Languages, an online language-learning system that teaches actual conversation skills.

• Growing up he always saw the gap between what his family had and what everyone else had. This pushed him to become an entrepreneur.
• Michael had a difficult time gaining traction on his initial business ideas. Then Michael and his brother decided to set up an e-commerce site selling language learning software.
• After about six months the business become profitable. Month after month the business grew and they opened their own office in Novi, Mich.
• Then they made a bold move, sold their business and started Mango to sell their own software. They launched it in August 2007 and posted info on forums and blogs to get traffic.
• They got coverage on some big blogs, like Mashable and Lifehacker. Then they made the front page of Digg and 45,000 people visited their site. They had the traffic but still struggled with advertising and revenue.
• Then they realized there was an opportunity to focus on the public libraries. Four months into that, they had their best month ever in business. Mango Languages soared from there.
• Lessons from Michael’s experiences: Quickly narrow in on one thing and figure out what you’re passionate about, or what you can be the best in the world at doing. It’s all about focus. Don’t be everything to everybody. Figure out who you are and be the best at that.

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Post by Nikki Stephan

Sola Obayan and her team have found their groove and are busy building out NakedDetroit, which was previously DetroitTV. NakedDetroit’s tagline is “Exposing Detroit to the World.”

The team is working on a logo and website. They already created a Twitter handle and Facebook page. The WYCD Downtown Hoedown is also happening this weekend at Hart Plaza, and they’re hoping to either send a team member there or get some video from someone who is already there.

Here’s Sola and her team on video sharing more details about NakedDetroit and what everyone is working on today.

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Post by Nikki Stephan

Here are a few pics from yesterday and today, courtesy of Henry Balanon. Of course we had to do some epic air jump photos in honor of Team Detroit from the Chevy SXSW road trip. Becky Johns also posted some photo goodness on her Flickr page.

Posted by brandon

The ideas are a flowin’ at Startup Weekend Detroit! The morning was definitely productive, and we just refueled with lunch from Miguel’s Cantina.

Jordan Fylonenko is working with team CauseCrazy. The team hatched this idea today, so it wasn’t part of the original eight business pitches that made the final cut during Day 1. The idea behind CauseCrazy is to raise money for different charities, and if the donation amount is met, someone will have to do a crazy stunt (think MTV’s show Jackass). The team already has Twitter and Facebook pages set up.

Here’s a video of Jordan telling us more about CauseCrazy.

I also chatted with Dave Benjamin, who’s working on team Blitz Babble. This was part of the eight ideas from Day 1, but the team tweaked the business idea a bit.

Check out this brief video with Dave to learn more about Blitz Babble.

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Post by Nikki Stephan

This post is sponsored by Urbane Apartments and the Urbane Life blog

We had a great start to Startup Weekend Detroit last night. Eight ideas made the final cut, and now the teams are hard at work hashing out their businesses. Michael Gregorowicz’s idea that deals with using QR codes is one of the final eight. Check out this brief video of Michael explaining his idea.

I’ve been listening in as the ReframeDetroit.com team is hard at work brainstorming how to solidify the business. This is Michael Beaton’s baby, and he already took the first stop by creating a blog for the business.

So what do you have to do to bring people from the suburbs into Detroit? Tug on their heart strings. The Reframe Detroit team wants to create aspirational content, such as photos from the Detroit Institute of Arts, Belle Isle, Eastern Market and the RiverWalk, and share it with the community.

Becky Johns coincidentally had already taken photos of friends in frames, so the team is going to incorporate that idea into their aspirational photos. They’re also brainstorming a logo that uses the frame idea.

Charlie Wollborg suggested Reframe Detroit could be a company that hires people to go out in the community and deliver the positive messages about Detroit. That may come down the road, but the entire team agreed on this: This business needs to focus on showing that there is hope left in Detroit.

Another team member suggested a good idea. They need to find influencers in different neighborhoods (like the parents who are involved and care about making the city better) and get them involved to support Reframe Detroit.

Maybe starting with Detroit is biting off more than they can chew. The team started questioning, “should we start with a neighborhood in Detroit?” Or, “should we start with a suburb like Redford or Pontiac, find success and then leverage that to tackle Detroit?”

Another team member posed a good question: How is Reframe Detroit different from similar initiatives that aim to improve Detroit? Michael said it’s unique because it focuses on values, attitudes and beliefs and creating marketing campaigns to improve those values, attitudes and beliefs about Detroit.

Now comes the hard part – coming up with the actual campaigns. Becky is planning to go to different locations in Detroit today to get some photos that put the city in a positive light.

The Reframe Detroit team is off to a great start. If they keep up this momentum, they’ll have a solid business plan put together by the end of the weekend.